Drivers Beware: Amelia Bedelia's Behind the Wheel!

Driving is a dangerous task. You hear about terrible crashes all the time, often with perfectly competent people behind the wheel. So the thought of a perpetually perplexed person rolling along down the road is not a very comforting one, but this is just the situation in Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia, written by Herman Parish, nephew to Peggy Parish, creator of the series.

It's Amelia's birthday, so Mr. Rogers suggests that she take his car and go off to visit her cousin, who is cursed with the one of the strangest names I have encountered. Cousin Alcolu will have to wait, though, because Amelia hasn't driven in years, so her boss offers to accompany her on a test run around the countryside. It's a good thing it's a sparsely traveled dirt road, because things don't go very smoothly. Well, what did Mr. Rogers expect with Amelia in the driver's seat?

Veteran Amelia illustrator Lynn Sweat is still in place here, lending greater continuity to a series whose reins have been passed to the next generation. Although she has the day off, she's still garbed in her black maid's dress with the white apron and the black flowered bonnet. Throughout the book, her face displays a range of emotions from glee to confusion, along with one very fearful scream when, as Parish drolly writes, "Mr. Rogers was about to blow up. The tire beat him to it."

Amelia tries to follow Mr. Rogers' instructions, but is it her fault that he's sending so many conflicting messages? Where is this fork that's supposed to be sitting in the middle of the road? Why is he cross when she turns right after he warns her about the bear to the left? My question is, How in the world did Amelia Bedelia ever get her license in the first place? Maybe she suffered some blunt force trauma to the head between the time she got her license and the time she started working for the Rogerses, addling her wits to an unnatural degree. I guess we'll never know.

One thing we do know is that Amelia Bedelia is as entertaining as ever in Herman's hands. This book is a little shorter than most in the series, and the format is slightly different, as it looks like a typical picture book rather than the I Can Read books, which are thicker but not nearly as wide. Everyone can get a laugh out of Amelia's misadventures here, and a sigh of relief that they're not the ones in the passenger seat.